


to feel the sting

by wrizard



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Emotional Dysregulaion, Flashbacks, Gen, Hades (Video Game) Canon-Typical Temporary Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Rape Aftermath, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Unpalatable Trauma Responses, hurt/some comfort, two people have four simultaneous breakdowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 04:15:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30117021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrizard/pseuds/wrizard
Summary: You land, crouched, underneath the training yard window. Your knuckles clench white around Stygius’ hilt. Sounds hit like needle-pricks – the rushing of the river, like blood in your mouth, your ears; the rough grunts of the wretches ahead –A gleaming Daedalus Hammer floats in front of you. You ignore it.Just keep moving.
Relationships: Achilles & Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 36





	to feel the sting

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct follow-up to [blood on snow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29297340), in which Hades assaults Zagreus. However, this piece can be read as a stand-alone work. 
> 
> **SERIOUSLY, MIND THE TAGS.**
> 
> CONTENT NOTES, INCLUDING SPOILERS: In this work, Zagreus deals with the aftereffects of a violent sexual assault, including self-hatred, dangerous/self-harming behavior, emotional dysregulation, dissociation, and flashbacks. Achilles offers his help, and faces his own experience of sexual trauma. Later in the fic, Zagreus makes deliberately unpleasant advances toward Achilles including unwanted kissing, and ignores his "stop" more than once before backing down.

_What will it take_ , he roars, _for you to listen_.

-

You land, crouched, underneath the training yard window. Your knuckles clench white around Stygius’ hilt. Sounds hit like needle-pricks – the rushing of the river, like blood in your mouth, your ears; the rough grunts of the wretches ahead –

A gleaming Daedalus Hammer floats in front of you. You ignore it.

Just keep moving.

Hypnos perks up when you crawl out of the Styx. “Been a while since a plain old wretched lout took you out! Maybe next time, don’t stand still and let them hit you.”

You don’t even look at him.

-

Varatha howls as you step around a boon glowing with Athena’s crest.

“Not now,” you mutter, clinging to its shaft.

You fall to the crunch of a thug’s club caving in your skull. It takes a full minute for you to bleed out, seizing and vomiting in the dirt.

-

“Might want to take a break, there, Zag,” Hypnos says as you slog into the House for the third time in fifteen minutes. “You’re looking a little toasted.”

“Let me be, Hypnos,” you snap.

He pulls back into his cloak. “You don’t have to bite my head off.”

You don’t dignify that with a response. You head straight back to your room. Your father isn’t back yet.

-

“What’s wrong, boyo? You ain’t hittin’ half as hard as usual!” goads Skelly.

You swing harder. Malphon crunches against bone, shattering ribs and chipping vertebrae.

“That’s more like it. Come on, give it to me!”

You jab, and punch, and jab again. The fists crow in delight, and you find yourself grinning. You don’t feel happy. You don’t feel anything but the crush of pulverized remains. With a swift uppercut you knock Skelly’s skull off his spine, and it smashes into the ceiling, cracking into pieces. They rain down on you, stony little chips like pebbles.

A moment of silence as Skelly’s twitching body dissolves.

This is a waste of time.

By the time he reforms, you’re already out the window.

-

As you gasp and cough the last of the Styx out of your lungs, you see something’s changed. Only a few shades linger around the edges of the entrance hall. Hypnos is gone, and Cerberus is out. The House is quiet, silent as the snow.

At your father’s empty seat, his papers are in disarray.

He’s back.

Bile climbs up your throat. You choke it back down. Your hands shake, so you squeeze them into fists. You have to get out of here. You have to keep moving.

“Zagreus.” A huge, heavy hand catches your wrist.

You see white, and jerk backward, snarling, to meet your foe, hand falling to your belt where Stygius is not.

Achilles steps back, eyes wide.

It’s just your teacher. His hand is wide, a little wider than yours, but not so big as it felt on your arm. You reel back a step, dropping out of fighting stance. Your skin prickles with phantom touch.

He stares at you with brows furrowed, hands raised. “Apologies, lad,” he murmurs, “I did not intend to take you by surprise.”

“Sorry, sir,” you manage, heart hammering.

He smiles. It’s strained. “No harm done. Hypnos asked that I check on you.”

“I’m fine,” you say.

He nods, looks back to the empty throne. The air in the House is still and dead. “May we speak, lad? In private?”

You shrug. Your blood rushes in your ears, but you let Achilles herd you gently to your room. He is careful not to touch.

-

_I have to stop you,_ he says. _I have to do this_.

-

“Zagreus?”

You start, a flash of panic clutching your tongue. “Oh, Achilles, sir, I – ”

“It’s fine, lad, I only fear I lost you for a moment.”

You’re in your bedroom. Sitting on your bed. Achilles stands in front of you, arms held ready to catch you should you fall. Your head spins, a little. The bedspread is soft, crumpled up in your fists. You exhale, slowly, uncurling one finger at a time.

“Can you tell me where you went, just now?” Achilles says.

You want to bare your teeth, curse and swear, haul off and punch him square in the jaw. “I don’t know,” you say, instead. He sighs, just a little, and shame wells up in your throat. “I’m sorry.”

He tilts his head. A small, private smile. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

You look at the floor. There are little piles of cloth strewn about. Your desk is in disarray. Streaks of char stripe the tile, especially by the door to the training yard. Your shoulder aches.

“May I sit?”

You nod, slowly. He perches beside you on the bed, careful not to bump against you even by accident. You want to scream, a little; whatever violent, primal creature you’ve become, even your teacher doesn’t want to touch you.

Achilles looks at his hands. They are strong, quick, and as precise as yours are clumsy. “I must explain something to you, lad. Please, listen until I am finished.”

You stare at the floor. “Yes, sir.”

He breathes in, and out, and says, “Up above, I was celebrated as a warrior. But not by all. To many, I was a monster. My very presence brought pain and suffering.”

You don’t flinch, even though you want to.

“War is not an even battle, with proud, noble soldiers facing one another on some divine field. That dream belongs to Lady Athena. The real thing, the war of Ares – it is vicious, and vile, and hurts most deeply those who cannot fight back. I learned that… far too late.” His shoulders are tight and straight, with none of their customary looseness.

If you sat in front of him that way, he would chuck you under the chin. _Posture, my Prince. Stay loose. Stay ready._

“I am thankful that you have not yet seen true war in your life. Though I am but your teacher, I care for you very deeply; and, with that care in mind, it is clear that, though you are exceptional with a weapon in your hand, you are not built for the cruelty war requires.”

You hunch, a little.

He looks at you, smile bitter on his kind face. “Your tender heart is a great gift, lad. It will guide you true, in a way most men will never know.” He pauses. Runs a hand through his hair. “Do you know of battle-sickness?”

“No, sir,” you say, stomach rolling.

“In men,” he says, gently, “those with tender spirits may be greatly injured to witness true cruelty. It… wounds the soul. I have seen it, many times, in my years at the front. Charming boys with bright laughs who simply laid down and did not get up again. Sweet youths with soft hands turned, overnight, to rabid dogs.”

“Why do you tell me this,” you snap, heart pounding. “As you so graciously say, I have seen no wars, and I am hardly one of your gentle human boys.”

Achilles looks at you with deep sadness. You feel sick. “Cruelty and barbarism do not only bloom in battle,” he says. “Though it is not often spoken of, others may suffer these deep soul-wounds. Many of the women, the girls I met, at Troy…” He looks at his palms. “I took a few for my own, Zagreus. I did not touch them, nor did my Patroclus. But there were so many I could not…”

His hands curl into white-knuckled fists.

If he moves toward you, you might be able to slip past him, if you’re lucky and can get him by surprise. He’s faster than you, and a better fighter, and as your tutor he’s made a point to know your weak spots – but if you can throw your bloodstones at just the right moment -

“Forgive me,” he says, softening his fingers. “I think of wrongs long past.” He turns to you, shuffling a little on the bedspread. “There is little to be done when all of them – all of us – have since come to your father’s realm.”

You exhale, and glance to the empty doorway.

“Zagreus,” he presses, “your battle may not be a war, but you bear greater suffering than any one man I have never seen. You are murdered, over and over, and come home whistling. It is an extraordinary fortitude that can withstand these terrors.” He looks at your face, brow creased with worry. “And yet, these past days, you stalk the halls of this house like a wounded wolf.”

A ripple of feeling, a twisting in your guts - in a flurry of motion, you rise and step away from the bed. You want to run and run and run, and never listen to his fanciful stories, never think of weak boys too frail to handle what battles the Fates called them to.

“Lad, please,” Achilles calls. “Let me finish.”

There’s nowhere to run to, though. Every road sends you back here, to your room. To this house. To –

Your fingers itch to move, so you stalk to your desk and straighten a pile of papers. “Speak quickly, if you must.”

A silence. You look behind, and see Achilles, back straight and face drained of colour.

“What,” you snap.

He shakes his head, touches his jaw. He says, voice hoarse and shocked, “It is simply that… I have not ever heard you sound so much like your father.”

A pulse of white-hot rage blasts through your blood and you snarl, crushing parchment under your fingers, feet bursting into bright flame. “I am nothing like him!” you roar. Your voice echoes in the rafters, booming into the still, dead air.

“Of course not, my Prince,” Achilles says, soothing, with an edge of something unknown tight behind his throat. “I meant no disrespect.”

You look him over. He has laid his hands on his knees, palms up in submission, bowed his head enough to look at you from under his eyelashes. He is treating you carefully. He is afraid.

Achilles, your teacher, the only man to ever give you the sweet gift of his pride – he is afraid.

The fire drains out of you, leaving a cold numbness behind. You slump onto your chair. “I’m sorry, sir,” you say, again.

He shakes his head slowly. “Don’t worry, lad. I’ve seen worse.”

You laugh, empty and hollow. “Really?”

“Really.”

You sit, together, in the still room, air curdling in the silence. Achilles looks… weary. Older than you’ve ever seen him. Exhaustion slumps his shoulders, and his bright, ready hands curl over his thighs like even his bones ache. Still, his eyes are bright, penetrating, assessing.

“What happened,” you say, words clinging to your tongue, “to those men? The youths you mentioned?”

He looks away. “We did not speak of it. But we held great festivals, every year, to mourn our fallen and to celebrate our victories. The viewing of the great tragedies helped some; to let oneself weep, to feel the sting, is, for many, the way to heal a wound.”

“But for those who were not in war? For… the women?” you push, a buzz of prickling adrenalin in your gut.

“Companionship. Patience. Understanding,” Achilles says. “Speaking to one who knew the same soul-agony.”

With a flush of nausea, you see him look at your body. Your hands. His eyes trace your belt.

Gods. He knows.

You jerk back out of your seat, vibrating with the need to move. “I ask from curiosity only,” you bite out. “The cruelty of mortals is their own, and the province of my fairer cousins.”

“Of course, my Prince,” says Achilles.

You pace to your mirror. Your face is drawn, jaw tight and twitching. Your eyes are sharp and dart about like scuttling rats. You don’t look at the red one. Your chiton is askew, so you pull it straight, put it right, the way it’s supposed to be, but your pauldron sits crooked. One of the skulls –

One of the skulls is cracked, from –

“Nothing happened to me,” you lie, voice shaking.

“I will not force you to speak, my lad,” Achilles says. “I only wish to know the shape of your wound, that I may help it heal.”

You try again, the words crawling up your throat, _nothing happened_ , but they catch bitterly in your mouth.

Suddenly disgusted, you sneer, and unbuckle your pauldron with quaking fingers, throwing it to the floor. Everything you wear – skulls. Red and black. The colours of your father’s house. You unstrap your greaves, get caught on the buckles.

You are no longer sneering.

“Sir,” you say, voice thin, and without a word he crosses to you, sinks smoothly to the ground, and undoes the ties with deft fingers. Fingers numb, you hold out a trembling arm, and he takes over. He unwinds your leather straps with quiet focus, sliding golden bangles carefully off your arm. You struggle with your belt, and he helps with that, too. Without your meaning to, your whole body has begun to shake, teeth chattering and muscles clenching. He says nothing, only keeps his hands carefully distant.

When you are down to your chiton and leggings, he steps back. “Do you want to keep the rest on?” he murmurs, gently.

_The feeling of blood soaking through cloth, clinging to your skin._

A great wave of nausea hits you. “No,” you blurt. “No.”

He does not look you in the eye, but focusses on your collarbones, like he’s avoiding the gaze of a wild dog. “Shall I help you?”

Feeling very, very small, you nod.

With precise movements, Achilles unpins your chiton, catching the fabric before it falls to the floor around your feet to be burnt by your heels. He pulls it carefully over your head. It ruffles your laurels. He pauses, looking at your body, that frail, weak thing that fails and fails and fails to help your mother, to fight the enemy, to protect itself.

“I’m going to touch your waist,” he says, as if he’s warning you of some incoming strike to parry. “I’ll close my eyes, if you wish it.” You just look away, and hope that’s response enough.

He must take it that way, because he carefully slides his hands over your waistband, tucking one finger in each side. With great attention, he slips your leggings down, past your knees, to your ankles.

The air on your thighs is snow-cold.

-

Arms, tight around you. You’re crying. Sobs wrack your body, and you crumble into the warm embrace.

“There, lad. I have you.”

You’re on the ground. On your knees. You’re being held, steady, pressure enough to comfort. Your throat aches, and you smell bile. You must have vomited. You’ll have to get someone to help clean it up – not Dusa, she shouldn’t have to deal with your mess.

A sharp pain echoes in your shoulder, a spear-straight line of agony through the bone. 

“Follow my breath.”

He inhales, loud in your ear, and exhales slowly. You follow. A steady draw in. A steady release. The light smell of weapon oil and warm skin.

Achilles.

“That’s it,” he says. “With me.”

You lean your face into his neck, feel the warm sureness of him on your wet cheek. He’s strong, solid as a brick wall. Gentle as your mother’s hands. Your chest hitches, a new wave of tears threatening.

“Zagreus, stay with me, now.” Achilles rubs one hand along your back. His hands are so much smaller than your father’s, sun-warm rather than burning hot. You can feel his weapon calluses. They’re a little scratchy.

He’s got you both wrapped in his meadow-green himation, hidden from the cold air and sheltered from all eyes but your own. You are desperately, pitifully grateful.

There, on the floor, you huddle in your teacher’s arms for one minute, two, ten. Like a child, you press yourself to his skin, seeking comfort in his broad arms, and the strength of his shoulders. You hide in his cloak. It feels like a shield, like none above or below could breach your gentle fortress of cloth. Heaving sobs come and go in waves, great wails ripping out from your throat, leaving you hoarse and aching. Wretched silence haunts the moments between.

It takes near twenty minutes for the tears on your cheeks to dry. By then, your muscles have begun to complain. You twist a little in Achilles’ arms to give your knees a moment of relief.

With strange tenderness, Achilles sighs, and presses a light kiss to your hair. “Let’s get you cleaned up, lad.”

You don’t want to move, but he’s standing up, keeping his arms wound around your chest. You struggle to get your feet underneath you, at first, but when you wobble, he catches you.

“You have personal baths, yes? There, perhaps,” he says. “No interruptions.”

Right. Where no one will have to see you.

Once you came of an age where you could wash by yourself, Nyx built you your own bath chamber from a pocket of the Night. (She had “already dealt with enough bathing arguments” between her other sons, and even back then she knew how uncomfortable you felt sharing space with your father.) It was a small space, half the size of your room, but you spent much of your time there. It was the only real privacy you had.

You close your eyes and let out a thread of intent. Body still tight against your teacher’s, you reach one hand out, as if for the latch on a door, and – there it is. You twist your wrist and the door to your baths opens.

Achilles stares, then half-smiles. “I’m not sure what I expected.”

You don’t say anything. You just lean on him, as he guides you carefully in.

-

The room is warm and dry, despite the steam drifting off the bathing pool. Clean, cool mosaic floors reflect the glossy star-studded black of the distant sky-ceiling. The strange star-music that lingers in Nyx’s cloak is clearer here, in a soft chorus of windy voices and plucking strings. It smells like Nyx. Like home.

Well. Like what home used to be.

You’ve spent many hours in this space; furiously primping for your first night with Meg, relaxing in the hot water after a rowdy spar with Achilles, scrubbing dog slobber off your body after a particularly enthusiastic greeting from Cerberus. But you’ve always been here alone.

Achilles steps in like he’s afraid to touch the floors.

“It’s safe,” you rasp, throat aching – your first real words in near half an hour. “Same stuff as the House.”

“In the House, you can see the rafters.” Achilles has his face stuck in a childish, distrustful pout, like you haven’t seen since you offered him your first nectar. He catches your eye, then sighs, slipping into a wry smile. “Yes, yes, fear is for the weak,” he says, and chuckles at himself, looking around at the shining, star-lit tile.

As he finally steps fully inside, the door closes noiselessly behind him, leaving no sign of its presence.

“Ah. Spooky,” he says.

The wrung dregs of your heart lift a bit. Carefully, you ease out from his hold, waving him away. Gods. It’s so much easier to breathe in here, in the dim, sparkling light where nothing can touch you, where no one can follow without invitation.

Where you have a door.

Your legs are still shaky, and you stagger a few steps toward the bath before Achilles offers you a steadying arm.

“No sense in slipping when we just got here.”

You don’t want to rely on him any more than you have to – but his earnestness is honest. You take his wrist in your hand as you slip into the water. 

The bath itself is compact, barely bigger than your bed, and, at the lowest part, just deep enough to cover you up to your neck. It’s nowhere near your father’s massive pool, or even Hypnos’ custom hot spring, but it serves its purpose. It’s not hot enough to scald, but it’s close; as you sink in, your skin prickles and pinks. Heat seeps into your muscles, soothing aches and knots you hadn’t even noticed.

Achilles wanders the room, idly inspecting the furnishings. He picks up a finely made copper strigil. “Beautiful work,” he mutters, and returns it carefully to its place, on a small tiled table stacked with clean drying cloths. He passes over a small cluster of urns filled with scented oils, stopping in front of the long, clear reflecting glass at the end of the room.

“Ah,” he says.

You run a hand over your arm, grimacing as grit and blood scrub off into your palm. “What is it, sir,” you rasp.

“Nothing, lad, only…” Achilles rubs at his face. “I look terribly old.”

“Sir,” you protest.

“None of that, now, I only mean that my eyes are… tired. More than I ever saw aboveground. Perhaps even here we are doomed to change.” He’s pulling at his cheeks, now, like he can prod them back into their youthful shape.

“I suppose,” you mumble. Before he can say anything to that, you duck your head under the searing water, scruffing your fingers through your wild hair. There’s no point being delicate with it, as it’s always been just as contrary as you no matter what oils or soaps you use. You massage out the spots where blood has crisped the hair into spikes. No unusual lumps or bumps. Your jaw aches from clenching, and there’s a tension headache creeping up your temples, but it’s all… normal.

You burst back out of the water with a shake of your head. It takes a moment to get your hair off your face. You splash about a little, wetting behind your ears and that little spot under your arm where dirt tends to cling. You can feel the shade of a smile finally tugging at your face.

Achilles coughs.

Ah. He wants to talk, still. Your stomach sinks.

You float to the edge of the bath, where there’s a ledge to sit on. Achilles is watching, so you don’t crawl out, just sit with the water up to your collarbones.

Achilles carefully removes his cloak, and folds it neatly to lay it on top of the drying cloths. “May I join you, lad?”

You nod, but don’t say anything.

He sighs, and hikes up his skirts, knotting them up to bare his knees. He sets down next to you on the bath’s edge, hissing as he lowers his feet into the hot water. You could knock your shoulder into him; a companionable bump. You don’t.

“Zagreus,” he says, then stops to sigh. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

You look over at his legs. They’re muscled and shapely, built for speed and strength. The back of one ankle is stained a soft purple, like a birthmark. His weakness. You can barely see it through the distortion of the water.

“Before I lost my Patroclus, I had no time to think of others. I thought only of my own pride. I never learned the healing arts. But.” He reaches over carefully, brushing one hand softly over your wet hair. “I promise I will help you, however I can.”

You sit with that, for a long minute. Star-songs chime and the bath bubbles. Without even the movement of the shades, there is no way to mark the time; existence simply continues, endless.

You open your mouth to thank him. What comes out is, “I was so close.”

Silent and solid, Achilles holds his hand out as if to clap you on the back. When you don’t move, he instead rests his palm gently on your shoulder. It’s steady against your skin, with that strange coolness of shade-flesh.

For a moment you must fight to keep from pulling back. The sensation of skin-on-skin is too much; a hot, electric feeling, like being pulled in every direction at once, like falling face-first into the Phlegethon, or being squeezed tight by the giant fist of a Wringer. Like the first touch of snow on your burning feet.

But it feels _good._

Words spill out of your mouth. “I was so close, sir. I’ve done it before. I saw her. I saw the sun. It was so warm. The colours – I never saw colours like that, and strange creatures, flying, and green things. I wanted…”

Achilles’ fingers squeeze on you, an anchoring pressure.

A lump comes up in your throat, and your eyes ache from crying. “I wanted to go back.”

“You will,” he whispers, voice rough with promise. “We will get you there.”

You shake your head. And there, there it is, the thing you’re running from, the thing you cannot force out of your mouth, out of your brain, that’s kept you scrambling, run after run after run:

“I’m scared.”

The words rip themselves out of you, leaving gaping, empty holes in their wake. Your throat constricts and your shoulders crumple. Your breath shakes.

Tender, resolute, Achilles says, “Give me your hand, Zagreus.”

Weak as a puppy, you lift your arm. He takes your hand in his.

You can hear Achilles breathing. He doesn’t have to breathe, you think, and feel the soft ache of knowing he’s making the effort for you, so you can follow.

In. Out.

His hand is wide, and warm, as solid as anything else down here. You can feel his spear calluses, the sure grip of his fingers, like he can keep you grounded with his strength alone. Maybe he can. You squeeze his hand in wordless thanks.

“You’re safe, here, my boy,” Achilles says, soft and honest. “But, please. I must ask what happened.”

The bath bubbles. The stars chime and sing. You cannot bring yourself to look into his eyes. You don’t say no.

He shifts a little closer to you, stopping just shy of your shoulders. “Now, keep a hold of my hand, alright?”

You nod.

“On the surface – were you forced?”

Forced.

_Forced._

Bile crawls up your gullet, your belly clenches, and you grip at Achilles’ palm like a lifeline. You can’t look at it, can’t remember it, don’t want to think about it – the scrape of blood-wet fabric on your ankles, the hissing drip of ichor on snow, the vague shape of a huge, black weight pressing down on your back, ribs snapping, hideous, sharp, ripping pain between your legs –

You can’t speak, the pressure on your lungs is so great, and the spear wound in your shoulder aches and aches and aches.

“I,” you gasp.

“Breathe,” Achilles says, keeping steady pressure on your hand.

You heave in air, exhausted muscles clenching, the phantom taste of mud and blood gritty in your mouth. You want to run, and run, and run until you can’t anymore, until the slick grasp of the Styx tires of you and your soul disappears like vapour in the harsh, bright sunlight. You want to rage and scream and push. You want to take Achilles by the collar and drown him, hold him down until he knows just how powerful you really are, how much you can hurt someone.

“You don’t have to say it out loud,” he murmurs, quick and a little panicked. “Just – just squeeze my hand, once, for yes. If it was something else, we can – ”

Terror shrill in your guts, you squeeze his hand sharply. Once.

A silence.

He told you, didn’t he. That men did not speak of it. What a fool he must think you. A god, laid low as a mortal. But that’s what happens, on the surface, isn’t it? The stories are familiar – the brutal passions of your family, the base cruelties of humans. And you sought that out. Over and over and over. Never wondering when the other shoe would drop.

You wish briefly, powerfully, that you had never found your mother’s name.

“Gods above,” Achilles murmurs.

You flinch, and try to pull away, but he holds your hand tight in his.

“Please, my boy,” he says, some terrible emotion thick in his throat, “let me hold you for a moment.” His grip is strong, but not in the way he holds a weapon, or lifts you from the ground in training. It’s frightened.

The urge to console him leaps in your heart. You’ve never, ever heard him like this before. Scraping up your last ounces of bravery, you look to his face.

Your heart stutters.

For as long as you’ve known him, Achilles has been a stalwart companion. Even at his most furious, he tended to you with calm stoicism. Now, his face is blotchy-red, and tears slip silently down his cheeks. His eyes, the gentle blue of the Lethe, stare out at the bath glimmering with a deep, unfamiliar pain.

“Sir,” you manage.

He looks to you, mouth thin, devastation lurking in his brow. “I wish, more than anything, that I could have spared you this.”

You stare, dumbly.

He clutches your hand in his. “It was a fact of our existence, when I lived, in that brutal war, in that brutal place,” he murmurs. “I knew it too. Not your pain, not the violence that has been done to you, but… something like it. I was young, the greatest of warriors, and still I was a fool.”

His voice just stops, like it cannot bear to carry the tale. The gentle sounds of water fill the silence.

You hold on to his hand, tethering him down as he tethered you. Something roils in the hollow of your chest, reaching out for any small comfort, any small knowing.

Achilles looks at you. At your face. At your joined hands.

“I did not join the war against Troy… willingly. My mother” – he almost laughs, a pained grin on his face – “would not see me _wasted_ on some _pointless human savagery_ before my time. She hid me away in a neighboring kingdom. There was a princess. And, my mother, she married us. And – Gods, neither of us wanted it, but…” He slides his free hand over his face, clutching his mouth like it will keep the words in. His eyes are empty. He looks past you, into the darkness. “I laid with her. I didn’t want to. She cried, but I couldn’t stop - my mother, she would have killed us both, and Patroclus as well. Pat near did the job for her, in the end.”

Slowly, he turns back to you. His eyes catch your laurels, your jaw, your shoulder, refuse to focus on your eyes. “What happened left a wound in my heart that took years to heal, and when it did, it left a deep scar. In my life I never sought the company of women, Zagreus, it was not my way, and I did not – ” He seems to lose his nerve, staring at his rippling reflection in the water. “I cannot imagine what it did to Deidamia.”

His hand loosens in your grip.

“What I did to her was unforgivable,” he whispers. “If you think differently of me, lad, I would not blame you.”

“Sir, I couldn’t.” The words leap out before you can stop them.

“Zagreus,” he says, voice cracking.

“I _couldn’t._ ”

It’s true. The ache of a parent’s fury is familiar, and the terror for one’s life. And you know him, deeply, in his soul’s purest form. This warrior, this monster, this mortal man whose life he regrets more and more each day – to you, he will always be Achilles, your tutor. A kind man. A gentle heart. Worn by decades of regret, certain in his uncertainty, ready to do anything for those he loves. A good man who did terrible things.

(But something deep inside you screams, snarls, writhes – even he, this man you trusted so much more than your own father, even _he_ is tainted by this inescapable cruelty. How could you ever be safe, with him? Will he turn on you, now, in this safe and secret place you’ve gifted him so foolishly?)

The silence holds for a moment, and Achilles drops his head. “I fear that answer may change, in time. It has before.”

“It won’t.”

He gives you a sideways sort of crinkled smile, like he knew exactly what you would say, then shakes his head. “You remind me of Patroclus, sometimes.”

The man he lost. The man he loved. The man he lusted for.

The water around you is warm as fresh blood.

You let his hand go, thinking desperately of anything else, but wheeling back to the heavy, impossible scream under your breastbone. This is what men are capable of. This is what gods are capable of. To love one, so deeply, and to hurt another for their sake. After all, what does your father do but love his missing wife? Is that not why he –

No. No, think about something else.

Gods, your father’s back home. When you leave this room, he could be anywhere – will he be raging, or still as stone? Will he even acknowledge you?

“You saw Father return,” you say, voice small. You look up at Achilles, at his unreadable expression, at his thin, empty frown and the tear-tracks still wet on his cheeks.

“Aye, I did,” he says. “He was in a state. Near threw his desk into the Styx. Stomped off to his rooms, ordering none to follow. I’ve never seen him so frightened.”

“Frightened.”

Slowly, Achilles nods. “He was drawn, pale as paper, and shaken. A shade touched his arm and he drew his spear, quick as a blink.”

Oh. Just as you did.

“His quarters are spelled to keep sound inside, or I would tell you more. He did not come out again.”

You notice that your hands are clenched. You relax them, carefully.

Achilles shifts to brace himself better on the tile. “Zagreus… forgive me, but was he there? When you were attacked?”

You stop breathing.

Achilles’ voice is tender and pained. “Did he see who did it? He stayed up above for so long, longer than he’s ever gone before, and I…”

He doesn’t know.

Your teacher, legend of men, wise and clever, cannot even imagine the cruelty you have seen. The cruelty that has been enacted upon you by your own father.

A harsh sound spills from your mouth. Then another. Then you’re laughing.

It rips through you, a mirror of the sobs that wracked you before, painful and distorted. How funny it is, you think, that even the smartest of men would not think of it. That the greatest of mortal warriors is so far from you, from the immortal life, that he did not imagine your father could be the one who shattered you, turned you into this slinking, snarling, crawling animal.

You want to scratch your skin off.

Hurriedly, Achilles unclasps his belt and throws his skirts off, slipping into the bath beside you. “Lad, I – what is it? What did I say?” Standing in the water, he’s barely waist-deep, and holding his arms out as if to catch you.

“Yes,” you manage, voice cracking, “he was there,” and a gale of yelping laughter takes you again.

The utter confusion on his face sets you off again, and your belly starts to cramp. You stand, carefully; the water laps at your ribs. You lean back with your elbows on the bath’s edge and try to slow the hitching of your diaphragm.

You can see him thinking. His eyes dart across your chest, over the tender way you hold your aching shoulder, to the thick, aching tension of your jaw.

A distant part of you, still capable of thinking in straight lines, wonders what he sees.

Perhaps he sees you the way mortals see gods – divine, beautiful, ideal. Handsome. He looks at you, sometimes, when he thinks you won’t notice. His eyes trace the line of your shoulder, or the angle of your hip. His touch as he corrects your form has lingered, once or twice, on your thigh. It is the way of men up above to take their students to bed. But he never once spoke of it, or pushed, or tried anything.

In another life, or some other world, he could have loved you. Not this flinching, snapping beast you’ve become, but the sweeter you. The boy who set out on a quest to find his mother, not the tangled, ugly wreck who returned.

If he didn’t have Patroclus. But he doesn’t, anymore, does he. Now, he loves no one. Now, he looks at you.

Just like –

“Sir,” you say, mind racing, “has Father ever taken a lover, outside of my mother?”

He balks at that. “Zagreus, please, what’s happening?”

“ _Please_.”

Achilles shakes his head. “No. None that I know of.”

“Not even a bed-mate? Not even Nyx?”

“Lad, I cannot speak to his life in Olympus, but here… no, I believe he has not. Why do you…?”

A hot humming fills you ears. You jerk your head, trying to clear it away, but it’s thick as porridge. You’re tense and frozen, muscles locked, shoulder aching. The steaming water feels cold as snowy mud.

With the stomach-flipping certainty of a man running toward a cliff, you let the rage simmering under your skin curdle to a pinpoint of cold fury.

“Then, save my mother, I’m the only one down here he’s ever fucked,” you spit.

Your words ring on the tiles. Achilles pulls back from you, hot water rushing in to fill the space he left.

He must see the ragged edges of you, to retreat like that. He must know how dangerous you are. How filthy. How ruined.

Words spill out of you in an unstoppable flood, like tears from the eye, like blood from an open wound. “I’m sorry. Is this not what gods do? Fuck? Or is there some more pleasant word for the act, that doesn’t fright you so?”

“I – Zagreus, lad, I don’t – ”

“Perhaps ravish would suit. Is it ravishment, when you bleed out during the act? Or is it simply murder? Are the standards different, for gods? Is that what sex _is_ , for me?”

You look to your teacher. He stands in the water, hands up and palms bared, as if pacifying a rabid dog. His face is a pale mask of horror. You can’t stand it.

A wild snarl rises in your throat. You want to run. To shove him aside and bolt. Instead, you step toward Achilles, heart racing. “I’m good at it. Sex.”

“I, what?” he stutters.

You feel strange, like you’re watching yourself move from a distance. He’s stock-still in the water as you advance, water parting in front of you as if in fear. “Father hates me,” you hear yourself say, a slurring growl. “But he still managed to get it up, even when I was crushed and bleeding in the snow.”

The strange tears on Achilles’ colourless face are flowing again, curling over his cheeks and down his sharp, beautiful chin.

“Even Megaera hates me,” you say. “And she still fucked me. A _lot_.” You’re nearly touching him, now, his not-breath cool on your face, his bare chest scant inches from your own. “Do you hate me?”

With barely any movement, Achilles shakes his head.

Your pulse pounds heavy in your ears. “You like me. You like how I look. Why haven’t you fucked me, yet?”

“Zagreus,” he rasps. “Stop.”

You catch his face in your hands. Distantly, you feel the texture of his skin, cool and solid. His hair is so beautiful, all gold curls over a stern, handsome brow. He’s breathing quickly, faster than he does even in lessons, and his pupils are pinprick-small. He’s terrified.

“I’m here in front of you. I’m at your mercy. You want me, then _take_ me,” you hiss, and surge up to catch his lips with yours.

You mash your faces together, pressing yourself to his tightly-closed mouth, to his teeth, kissing him like you can erase yourself on his lips. His hands are drawn up, landing on your shoulders, grasp careful and shaky. It’s good. It’s good because you’re moving – you’re moving forward. You’re _doing_ something. This is something you can do.

It’s just a matter of time, isn’t it? Until he hates you, properly, like everyone else who’s ever wanted you. Until he’s had enough, and he -

With a growl, you pull back. “Come on.”

“Please, lad, stop,” Achilles says.

“Just get it over with,” you snarl, and pull him down to meet you, chest to chest, skin to skin, touch racing over your whole body in a sick swirl of intensity.

Then you yelp as he pushes you backward into the water.

“I said stop,” he snaps.

The water laps quietly at the edges of your small bath. You catch yourself at the lip of it. Achilles stands stiff before you. He’s tense all over, drawn tight across the shoulders and staring, wide-eyed, at you.

“What did I,” you slur, “did I do it wrong? Why don’t you want me?”

“Zagreus,” he says, brittle, “I said _no._ You kept going.”

“But,” you say.

He backs up to the opposite edge of the bath, and a vast, howling pit opens in your chest. You did it. You made him hate you. (Maybe now he’ll want you?)

“Lad, look at me.”

You do.

“I need a minute, right now, and so do you. I need you to calm down and come back. This isn’t you. I need to speak to _you,_ ” he says.

But you’re floating somewhere a little outside your own head.

“Zagreus, now,” he snaps, just like in lessons – when he calls a strike, when he keeps you in rhythm, when he readies you for a throw. It hits something in the back of your brain, and you crash back down into your body.

Your muscles ache. You’re shivering. There’s a split in your top lip, and your shoulder is on _fire_. “I, what, I – ”

Achilles slumps, suddenly, leaning back against the bath wall. “Gods,” he breathes.

“Oh,” you say. “Oh, I’m so – Achilles, I didn’t mean. Sir. I.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

You stare.

“Gods,” he says again, thick with tears, and he lets out a single, hoarse sob.

“No,” you croak.

He crumples down, leaning on the edge with his shoulders slumped. “I’m so, so sorry, lad.”

“No.”

“I should’ve – seen this coming, stopped him, I should have kept you safe. I swore to,” he says, eyes bright with tears.

“You couldn’t have – ”

“I swore,” he rasps. “You’re a boy under my charge and I let you be hurt.”

“I ran away,” you yelp.

“I helped you!”

“You’re a human,” you shout. “He’s a god.”

“I’m half Naiad,” he says, like it makes some kind of difference against the God of the Dead, and you almost want to laugh, but you’re so exhausted you would rather just crawl into bed and sleep until the gulf of emptiness under your ribs scars over.

He’s a bedraggled mess, now. His hair is wet, sticking to his shoulders and neck, and he’s still got his circlet and armbands on.

You soak in the silence for a minute, listening to one another’s ragged breath and the gentle tinkling of star-chimes.

“Fuck,” you say, finally.

“Fuck,” he agrees.

You scrub a wet hand through your hair. “Sir, I. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I won’t. I promise I won’t ever do that again.”

He just nods. “I know, lad.”

You look away.

“I need to talk to Nyx,” he says, apropos of nothing. “We have to get you the hell out of here.”

“Sir?”

“It’s not safe. We can’t – _I_ can’t leave you here. Not knowing what he’s done.”

“My father?” you murmur.

Achilles’ eyes flash. “He will never get the chance to hurt you like that. Never again. I promise you that.”

“But, sir…”

“We will find a way,” he snaps, “or I will go to my doom trying.”

You’d thought you had no tears left, but a hot, painful drop slips determinedly down your cheek.

“Zagreus,” Achilles says. “I don’t want to – to hurt you, or to send you off somewhere. But may I hold you, for a little while?”

All at once your skin cries out for touch, and you nod, jerky, unsure, desperate.

He half-swims, half-wades over to you, with an uncomfortable and awkward gait. But it doesn’t matter. The second his arms slip over your shoulders, you curl into his cool, solid form.

He’s real. He’s here. He promised to protect you.

For some reason you believe him.

**Author's Note:**

> <3  
> yeah. heavy one, huh. holding true to my pattern of writing either deep emotional problems or Very Silly Bickering  
> god this one kicked my ass. it's a little short and a little abrupt but it's also been open on my laptop for like a month so I'm putting it up so it's FINISHED and i don't have to fight with it any more  
> Of note: zag's secret bathroom is 100% cribbed from Crownofpins' utterly exceptional [On Gifting Traditions in the Underworld](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27179075) which is one of the best fits I've read all year, and if you haven't read it, what are you doing here!! Go read it now!!!  
> all my love xox
> 
> Let me know what you thought! Comments feed the writing beast. 
> 
> Working Title: zag whump


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